Why you should always get Domain Privacy

When you first get into business online, you dont want to spend a stack of cash before you see some return, and this generally means you will purchase basic packages from web companies, rather than going for all the frills.

But if there is one thing I have learned in all my years, it is that domain privacy is essential.

Domain Privacy is an extra option offered by domain name providers, which essentially blocks all of your personal data from being seen by anyone on the internet.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or more commonly referred to as ICANN, is the company in charge of managing all of the domain names around the world. They have agreements with all the domain name registrars, and force them to operate under strict rules and regulations.

One of these rules is that everyone who purchases a domain name must provide ICANN with their Name, Address, Email, and Phone Number. The problem with this is that those details then become searchable and accessible to anyone with a little bit of internet knowledge.

To find these records, one simply has to do a whois search. You can find a stack of companies who do this with a google search, and one such provider is who.is. For example, I have searched for one of my domain names, www.phonescausebraincancer.com, and these are the results: https://who.is/whois/phonescausebraincancer.com

The results that you see are AFTER I applied Domain Privacy with my domain provider, Namesilo. You can see how they put their own phone number, email, name, and address in the required positions, which is completely legal and a practice approved by ICANN.

Im sure you can think up many reasons why you wouldnt want your personal details floating all over the internet, including identity theft, fraud, and scammers, but the thing that really annoyed me the most was being hit by countless numbers of spammers.

The spammers will operate in a particular industry, and will search for relevant websites within that industry, and then access their whois information. If you do not have domain privacy, you are busted, and added to the permanent spam bot list. Some businesses will be bombarded with offers to purchase products related to their field of business.

But for me, with my domain being in the brain cancer field, they kept spamming me and offering me “premium” domain names for sale with similar names, such as cancer-cause.com and cancerphone.com.

Once I negotiated with the jokers, just for fun. They started at around $1,000 and after I said it was too much, they kept reducing and reducing and begging and begging. Eventually it went down to $50, but of course I was not interested.

The scammers also try to get you through your address. They can see the dates when your domain name is expiring, and use these dates to send you a fake renewal bill at an exorbitant fee, generally between 8 and 20 times the regular cost.

Once you pay them, they get full control of your domain name, and you will end up forking out this money every year till you either get rid of your domain name, or wake up to the fact you have been scammed and try to get your domain name back from them.

Im sure by now you can see that Domain Privacy is of the utmost importance. When you buy a domain name, you simply have to buy the upgrade with domain privacy too. The problem is that it can be expensive. Take a look at what the top providers are charging:

The big companies all charge between $12.00 and $51.50 for a domain name with domain privacy, and at least $30 if you also want domain protection, which is essentially a suite of tools to protect your domains from hackers.

After exhaustive searching, I found a company which blows away the competitors in terms of pricing. They charge just $8.99 for all 3 – domain name, domain privacy, and domain protection.

My previous company was charging me $14.99 just for a domain name, with no privacy or protection. So I was very happy to move all of my domain names over to Namesilo. It has saved me from the spammers, and saved me hundreds of dollars too. Their website includes an interesting comparison chart, which details exactly why they outperform the competition by a mile.

To be honest, I was expecting there to be some sort of problem with them, but their service is top notch, and their backend management interface is actually far better than the big companies. It is at least 100 times more easy to use that GoDaddy, who I consider the worst in the industry for ease of use.

Overall, Im really, really happy with Namesilo, and very glad to be spam free with their Domain Privacy. You can check them out HERE.

*** Remember to use the coupon code Roth to get an extra discount on your purchases ***